Echoes from nonlocal space
The B7 characters and universe used in this story belong to whosoever international law says they do. Where this is not me I am content, for fun only.
Kerr Avon awoke with a start, and for a moment lay unsure of where he was or what he would see when he opened his eyes.
Finally as sleep cleared away from his mind he sighed, opened his eyes and blinked. The he let his eyes wander over the quiet room with its stamp of comfort and understated luxury. Bed, floor coverings, furniture, blinds, paintings, and the spark of the comms light in the twisted glass of the trophy on the desk. Everything was as he expected, 'but why should it not be' he thought as he sat up and threw back the coverlet, 'I've just had another of those damned dreams.' Damnable they were too, and unexplained, unprecedented even in his darkest and most fearful days in the Dome. Yet he regularly woke this way, not every day but frequently enough for it to feel as if it were, and he had done so for the last ten years.
In a single fluid movement he dropped his feet to the floor and stood, frowning as the echoes of the dream rattled around his memory. This had been the worst so far, and the most vivid because he could sear that there was still the faint tang of propellant and blood in the air. He shivered, though the room was warm enough, then, with a shake of his head, he raised the blinds and crossed to the window where the first pale finger of dawn was clawing at the dark sky. Below him the tide broke against the rocks and the feathery trees swayed in the last of the night breezes, tranquillity reigned. He stood lost in thought watching as the dawn became bolder, pushing back the violets of the night and replacing them with silver gilt.
All was peace, all was beautiful.
The dream had not been peaceful though, and yet he could think of nothing in his past or present that would account for such images. Certainly not now. It was ten years since he broken Federation banking security, taking over three hundred million credits and disappearing before they even knew the money was gone. But his had been a bloodless crime, the only violence a scuffle with a visa seller in the dark alleyways of the outer Dome, yet he had been prepared even for that and there was nothing in the encounter that would fuel the images that had haunted his sleep almost since that moment. Had he not been prepared, well that might have been a different matter, as it was no blood had been spilled and he had been long gone and his image and identity wiped from the man's security system before the man had regained consciousness. So why did these dreams plague him, and why such consistent dreams?
Insecurity perhaps, some unacknowledged fear that they might yet catch him, put him on trial as they had done in the dream world? But why? He was as rich and as safe as he had wanted to be. The Federation had given up searching for him when he warned them that trying finding him might finish their currency and their economy for good; or rather they had stopped searching for him when he had given them enough evidence to convince them that he could make good his threats. Now he lived outside the territories of the Federation and its allies and he steered clear of all things financial, instead concentrating on mathematical and technical puzzles as he had always wished to do. Yet still the dreams of pursuit and the struggle for survival came and with each passing instance they lingered longer as if some sort of warning was being delivered. Yet in the end they always faded leaving just a sense of something that might have been, that might yet be. There was no one he could ask about them, at leapt not without significant risk and they did not yet bother him enough to pursue it; though this last one was particularly disturbing. When the daylight came his world resumed its balance and the satisfactions of his life overpowered any shadows sleep left behind. By the end of the day he would almost have forgotten them.
So as the panorama below slipped slowly into early morning the memories of his dream world faded and he turned away from the window, trying to focus his thought on the things he had planned for the day. But catching sight of his reflection as he did so he halted and suddenly the dream world surged back.
The man who stared back at him was lithe and fit and with a look of dangerous capability that he knew sat oddly on a rich academic. Many people had commented on the disparity between his life style and work and his appearance and habits, and there were those amongst he colleagues who speculated on his avoidance of gluttony and inebriation. He always fobbed off such comments with a careless smile and some remark about planning to live forever to enjoy his wealth or making up for his Dome bred habits, depending on the interests of the commentator. Other aspects of his unlikely life he passed off as hobbies or the practical precautions of a careful and very rich man, necessary evils even for one who employed professional bodyguards.
But he knew it was not true, in the early days he had put it down to his sudden break with his former life and the attainment of his ambitions that somehow had themselves the feel of dreams. But over the last couple of years he had realised that it was something in about his dreaming that drove him to run, to tone his muscles and maintain his resilience. Just as it was something in those same dreams that caused him to demand lessons in self defence from his startled security staff and that sent him to the firing range for long hours of practice with various weapons.
Because whilst he might try and shrug them off as night time fantasies something in a part of his brain he could not control was telling him to be prepared, that they were not just dreams and that somewhere he was fighting for his life.